Elizabeth Macquarie, widow of the reformist Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, is in mourning - not only for her husband but also the loss of their shared dream to transform the penal colony into a bright new world. Over the course of one long sleepless night on the windswept Scottish island of Mull, she remembers her life in that wild and strange country, a revolution of ideas as dramatic as any in history, and her dangerous alliance with the colony’s brilliant, mercurial convict architect.

From one of Australia’s foremost journalists, Luke Slattery, comes a bravura literary achievement, a rich and intense novel, an imagined history of desire, ambition and dashed dreams, and a portrait of one passionate, unforgettable woman - Elizabeth Macquarie.